The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  There it was dark, but the wind stirred the leaves, whispering some comfort that Caitlin could not quite grasp.

  Rhiann did not notice day fading into night, for the pains splintered into searing lights behind her eyes, pushing closer together until there was no break, and she existed in one long scream of agony, a wave that bore her up and swept her away. She panted and writhed, almost insensible, rearing up in Caitlin’s arms again and again to push. Her own groans floated to her as if from afar, and she wondered in her daze what wild animal bellowed in such distress.

  She barely felt the child crowning, lost as the sensation was amidst the bands of iron squeezing her, the knife contractions tearing her. And so, in the end, the baby slid out from between her numbed legs in a rush of fluid, almost unnoticed by her.

  The tearing pain then abruptly stopped, however, and in relief Rhiann almost slipped away to the darkness within. But something prevented her, urging her to stay awake. She dragged her eyes open, Caitlin still busy with the child between her legs, and all she could see above was the patch of grey sky that filtered through the hawthorn leaves.

  There, the last remains of dusk light still lingered – it had not been long after all.

  There was no sound from the child, and she squeezed her eyes shut, a wave of desolation greater than the pain cresting over her.

  ‘It is a girl,’ said Caitlin then, and despite the thickening of tears her voice sounded a strange note. The grasses rustled as Caitlin turned back to Rhiann’s head, and then she was pressing something into Rhiann’s arms, a tiny, wet, slippery thing, slick with blood and stirring feebly, as she had stirred all those moons in Rhiann’s belly.

  Caitlin hunkered down close to Rhiann’s ear. ‘She’s alive!’ she whispered, her tired gladness the only light in that dark, dreary dusk. ‘Rhiann, she’s alive!’

  CHAPTER 75

  Two cheeks, held close together. A tiny breath in, shallow and fluttering; a tiny breath out, bird wings brushing Rhiann’s cheek.

  The baby mews weakly, and curls up her fist, but her eyes do not open. In the gathering dark, Rhiann cannot see her skin; if it is healthy and pink, or blue and pale. She does not know how much time is left to them. She knows only that it is early, much too early to leave the womb. All the distant clashing sounds of the battlefield fade away, and Rhiann strains to listen to only one sound. The tiny breath in; a tiny breath out.

  The baby is pressed close to Rhiann’s cheek, close enough so that Rhiann can set her own lips to the side of her tiny mouth, pushing the air in and drawing it out. Giving her the life this rude expulsion from the womb will soon deny her.

  Sometimes, Rhiann is vaguely aware of the marching of feet, twigs cracking, the underbrush rustling, and harsh male voices. At these times, Caitlin curves her slight body over Rhiann and the child, her hair, smelling of sweat and birth blood, falling into Rhiann’s eyes. She has delivered the afterbirth and buried it to hide the scent, though few would pick that out among the blood of this day. Yet the baby herself makes no sound to give them away. She does not cry. She only struggles, writhing with her meagre strength. Fighting to live.

  Live, baby, live! Rhiann cries inside. Take my breath as you take your own. I will always bear you up; I will always hold you safe.

  Goddess, let her live.

  Starlight now filters down amid the darkness, and from somewhere below rises the faint glow of fires.

  ‘Why haven’t they come?’ Rhiann’s voice is cracked, plaintive.

  ‘They will come,’ Caitlin murmurs, and places one cold hand against Rhiann’s cheek. ‘They will come.’

  Eventually, the footsteps and fierce male voices and jingling of weapons fade away. The Romans retreat from the hill, leaving it still and quiet, and soon even the soldiers’ fainter shouts are swallowed by silence.

  Damp begins to creep up from the earth beneath, and Rhiann holds the baby against her skin, inside her tunic, her cloak wrapped around them both. There, she feels only the faintest fluttering of the child’s heart, cradled against the steady beat of her own.

  Caitlin is upright now, crouched by the edge of the thicket. After a time, she whispers reassurance to Rhiann and melts away into the shadows outside. The patch of sky between the leaves is now sprinkled with stars. Rhiann stares up at them, her eyes dry, her belly and the raw skin between her legs cramping with pain, weeping with fluid. Yet her soul is scrubbed clean of any human emotion, leaving her blessedly numb.

  Suddenly, Caitlin is back. ‘Can you walk, Rhiann?’ she whispers urgently. ‘Do you think you are bleeding?’

  Rhiann turns her head to the side, and a thorn scratches her cheek. ‘No.’ Her voice is flat, empty. ‘My body surrendered her so easily, in the end. I did not even fight to keep her.’ And it was true; despite the cramps the baby was so small and early that the lacerations of Rhiann’s birth canal were slight. The gate had shut behind the child already.

  For a moment Caitlin says nothing. Then her lips are warm on Rhiann’s cold forehead. ‘I ask you this, sister, because more men are coming up the hill. But they creep slowly, silently, and my heart,’ her breath rushes in, ‘my heart speaks to me that these are our men, returned at last.’

  Our men. Something about those words chips away at the ice around Rhiann’s heart. Eremon. ‘Where?’

  Caitlin points with her chin, one hand cupped over the baby’s crown. ‘They come up the path on the other side, from the west. Perhaps they have lain hidden until dark; perhaps that’s why they left us so long.’ From outside their thicket, a long, wavering whistle rises and falls in the damp air, soft enough to be a last bird’s call. Caitlin’s hand tightens on Rhiann’s shoulder. ‘It is them.’

  As Caitlin crawls out from beneath the bushes once more, Rhiann rouses herself. Holding the baby to her breast with one hand, she gingerly pulls herself up on to her knees. Then, sliding forwards, she manages to work her way to the edge of the concealing bushes, looking inwards towards the centre of the hill.

  There is very little light now, the campfire having gone out after the guards were drawn away and … killed? Captured? Rhiann doesn’t know; it all seems so long ago. But there is starlight, and across the silvered clearing the moon is rising, and dark shapes of men are stumbling. For the first time in hours, fear for Eremon stirs in Rhiann, a far, remembered pain, and she crouches in the shadows, her eyes straining against the light, which throws strange reflections on faces, the tree trunks, the rocks.

  She is close enough to recognize Caitlin’s lithe form as it slips across the clearing to the outcrop of rock, where the ashes of the fire are still smoking. She is close enough to see one shape detach itself from the rest. It is Eremon; Rhiann knows the tilt of his head, his walk, the width of his shoulders, even though he stumbles.

  Caitlin, however, seeks for another. Rhiann recognizes the eagerness in her out-thrust chin; her outstretched hands. Yet there is only Eremon, catching Caitlin by the shoulders and holding her there, murmuring in her ear. There is only Eremon to sink with her as she sags in his arms.

  Then they are alone on the ground in the moonlight, and in their mute grief Rhiann reads all.

  CHAPTER 76

  Lorn and Nectan had brought Eremon, accompanied only by Rori, Aedan and Fergus. Working together, the majority of the Epidii and Caereni had managed to escape the carnage, so Lorn explained to Rhiann in a dull, weary voice. Yet it had been too dangerous to remain in a large group, as the Romans had been scouring the copses and hollows and stream beds, killing where they found survivors. So the other men had been sent across the western hills, to make their way home as best they could.

  It was imperative to move away from this hill, this very night. Now.

  Since releasing Caitlin, Eremon had remained unmoving, swaying as if he would collapse. Rhiann had torn a scrap of her cloak to bind the baby against her skin, under her tunic, yet did not show Eremon the child. She had seen in his eyes that he was not capable of asking questions or understanding answers.


  ‘Let us go from this place,’ Rhiann heard herself say now, Caitlin trembling within her arms, skin icy with shock. It was a stranger who spoke, though, for Rhiann never wanted to take up such a mantle again. She did not want to be calm, and make decisions. She wanted to scream, and throw herself to the ground, and sob for her child, and for Conaire and Caitlin, and for Eremon’s fractured heart, and for all the dreams of Alba that lay bloodied and trampled on the plain below. ‘Let us go,’ she whispered, and her arm about Caitlin, turned them all to the west.

  Rhiann could never clearly recall the trek that ensued through the hours of darkness, as Nectan took them by paths that were soon lost to memory, among high, broken ground, and narrow rock walls that enclosed them in the night scents of moss and dripping damp. There was only Caitlin’s stumbling steps, and the harsh breathing of someone behind her, and Nectan’s dark head dipping and weaving before her. There was only Lorn’s hand as he steadied Caitlin when they stumbled over scattered rocks, and cold, mountain wind lifting Rhiann’s damp hair from her neck. The ache in her back and soreness between her legs she ignored, for they were as insubstantial as the wind itself.

  The only thing Rhiann was fully aware of was the pressure of her cheek against her child’s head, as she sent her senses within to memorize the beat of that tiny heart, the minute traces of breath, the birdlike weight in its bindings. The baby was the barest sensation across Rhiann’s chest, yet present nevertheless – enough for Rhiann to know she was real.

  At last the trail ended, in trembling exhaustion, rain that seeped down beneath a sheltering rock overhang and a dampness that crept into all their hearts. It ended with Caitlin, who at last sank into Rhiann’s arms and wept, and there was no end to that weeping, not while the hours of dark lasted, until dawn came again.

  CHAPTER 77

  Nectan was the first to stir at dawn. Rhiann saw him crouched at the lip of the overhang, staring across the valley to the west. Around Rhiann the others slumbered on, taking refuge in sleep, curled in tight balls of misery. Even Caitlin had cried herself into so deep an exhaustion that grief could not keep her awake.

  Rhiann glanced over at Eremon, lying as one dead, his eyes wide open, his face a mask of dried blood. Rori had laid Eremon’s stained sword at his side, though he made no move to touch it. And when Rhiann tried to speak to him in the night there was no one there, though his body moved and walked. So she knew his soul was wandering, as it had before, and only when it came back could she give him comfort.

  Rhiann had no energy to call to him, anyway. Her focus was elsewhere, and that was why she herself had not slept. For every shallow breath the baby took might be her last, and as Rhiann had expelled her, pushed her forth when she was not ready, so she would not abandon her to take her last breath alone.

  Rhiann now watched the sun slowly creeping up the sides of the valley, outlining first Nectan’s crouched leg, then his arm, bound about with a shell-embroidered thong, and then his hair, blue-black in the dawn light.

  Her dazed exhaustion was so great that at first she did not register Nectan’s sudden alertness. Then, when he rose slowly to his feet, Rhiann, fearing the worst, eased Caitlin down to her cloak and went to join him. Her legs were shaky and cramping, and the dress between was stuck to her skin with dried birth blood and discharge. She peeled it free and edged towards the light.

  At the sound of her step, the Caereni chieftain’s head swung around, his black eyes shining with wonder. ‘Look!’ he whispered fiercely, pointing down the valley to the west. The shadowed cleft was thick with woods of hazel, birch and alder, fringing a stream that tumbled in pale curls over dark, mossy rocks. The walls of the valley were steep, rising to heather slopes at the top. Rhiann stared up and down, seeing nothing, hitching the baby up so the dark fuzz on her tiny head came free of Rhiann’s tunic.

  ‘I saw it,’ Nectan murmured, peering up at a high saddle ridge that curved around the head of the valley, the upper peaks glowing with the dawn light. ‘I saw Him. He has come to guide us, to show us which path to take.’

  ‘Who came?’ Rhiann asked.

  Nectan’s voice was subdued with awe. ‘The Forest Lord. The Dawn Stag. The light was on His antlers – such great, branching antlers, the like of which I have never seen! He has come to lead us, to show us the pass over the mountain shield.’

  At the expression of this simple faith that someone still guided them, protected them, Rhiann tensed, then lowered her face, tears hot on her cheeks. ‘But Nectan, all is lost. Alba is ours no longer. Our gods will walk this land no longer.’ And the Goddess has abandoned us, was her deepest thought; a whisper in her soul.

  Yet Nectan turned to look at Rhiann, and though his once fine clothes were torn and spattered with blood, his cheeks scratched, his braids torn loose, still his face was not twisted with grief. The dawn drew a fine, golden veil across his dark eyes, and he smiled. He reached out one gentle finger and touched the crown of the baby’s head, the only one yet to acknowledge her. In response, the child stirred and mewed faintly.

  ‘Where there is death, there is yet life. The Mother told us this, before time began. Alba cannot be taken, or won. It just is, and its gods will always speak to those who pause to listen.’ Nectan pointed towards the western sea. ‘I will see you safely to the shore, and then seek my own home. And if the Romans find me there, and I die, it will only be as a sleep, a rest in the garden of the Mother, until I come again. Why fear such things?’

  Yet Rhiann’s heart remained cold, for as Eremon could not hear any words at all, she felt as if she could not hear these, could not accept them. The baby mewed once more, and Rhiann heard her own grief in the weak sound. She broke away to bury her face in the tuft of soft hair on her crown.

  ‘Come,’ Nectan said gently, ‘we must follow the Dawn Stag across the spine of the mountains, for He will bring us safely down to Dunadd, and home.’

  Rhiann wondered if anywhere could be home again, because home meant safety and peace. And that perhaps was not to be their fate on the shores of Alba.

  The crossing of the mountains was a nightmare from which none of them could wake. Moons later, when Rhiann was able to think on it, she realized that the leagues of Alba they crossed – this land for which they had fought so hard and loved with such intensity –did in the end pass them by, unseen and unappreciated, because of the grief that lay so heavy upon them.

  They walked silently, hardly resting, driving themselves high up the passes and then down the long valleys. Rhiann did not raise her eyes to the sky, and only noticed what passed beneath her: rushing, icy water; rain-sodden peat; scree slopes beside dark lochs; heather clustered on dry paths. And always there was the fear of pursuit pushing them from behind, for Eremon, the glory of the Alban resistance, the shining warrior whom all would follow, was now its greatest fugitive.

  Rhiann watched him whenever they stopped for the night, and saw the way he took himself apart, sitting alone as the dark drew in. She tried to offer him comfort, and even managed to sponge the blood from him, yet her words and touches merely sank into the cold, black pool of his grief and disappeared without a trace. Caitlin at least clung to Rhiann in her pain – inconsolable, yet undeniably alive.

  The only light that pierced those dark days for Rhiann was the baby. For she struggled, that child – she shamed Rhiann with her struggle. By rights she should have died at birth, or hours after. She still could not nurse, though Rhiann tried, biting her lip against the pain of her swollen breasts. But the child was too small, too weak, and only the trickle of water Rhiann managed to dribble into the side of her mouth kept her alive.

  For four days, the baby lived, her translucent eyelids shut, her breath hardly stirring the air, so insubstantial that it was hard to believe she existed at all. And step by step, Rhiann’s world narrowed down to nothing but that child. During the day she listened for each breath, and at night, among the dark caves and woods, she held a tiny, shell ear to her mouth and in a low voice sang all the songs she would
have sung over the cradle: of Rhiann’s parents and grandparents; the kings and Ban Crés; the healers and warriors; Linnet and Caitlin and Gabran. And above all, Rhiann told the baby of her father: how he looked the day Rhiann met him, standing in the boat from Erin, shining in gold and green, and how he had whooped for joy to know of her coming.

  It was then that Rhiann’s heart faltered, and the shame claimed her with terrible heat. For this babe had no chance, and yet fought so fiercely for life, as fierce as any warrior-maid. Had Rhiann done as much for her? No.

  Rhiann had warded her away with her brews, and when she did come, Rhiann’s body had not fought to keep her in the womb, safe and warm until her time. So when the songs failed, and Rhiann’s shame and anguish were a hot, red tide in her veins, she held the child and said nothing, but sought to give to her, at the end, the love she had not given so freely before.

  After two days of solid rain, the fifth day since the battle dawned like a wild rose blooming. Rhiann lay out in the open on the damp grass beside a splashing stream, drowning in the beauty of the sky. It was a clear arc between the peaks of the hills, washed with soft purple and gold, and the air was already warm. There was no breeze; all was silent but for the far cry of a lone eagle. It was a rare day; a day of gentleness and grace.

  And so Rhiann knew what this day would bring, and she rose as soon as it was light enough to see the trail. Taking no food or drink, she shook the beaded dew from her cloak and wrapped it around her, then went to Nectan, who was already sitting on a flat rock by the stream watching the sunrise. ‘I must climb to the peak of that mountain,’ Rhiann murmured, pointing to the ridge above as she cradled the baby with her other hand. ‘I beg you, let no one come after me.’

  Nectan nodded down at her from his rock, his dark, liquid eyes resting on the baby’s head for a moment. ‘I think we can stay here for one day,’ he said softly. ‘Be assured, lady, that you will have your peace.’